Building on its support for the OpenStack open source cloud computing platform, IBM this week unveiled a new slate of IBM Cloud OpenStack Services intended to help clients and developers integrate applications and data across hybrid clouds — including public, private and local cloud environments.

Combined with existing services from Big Blue, IBM says these new services enable developers and clients to launch applications on local, on-premises installations and now on public clouds hosted on its SoftLayer infrastructure without changing code or configurations. In other words, developers can build and test an application in a public cloud and, leveraging the interoperability of OpenStack, seamlessly deploy the same application across hybrid clouds.

Rising commitment to open cloud services

IBM is already one of the top contributors to OpenStack and has a seat on the OpenStack Foundation's board of directors, and the company says these new services reinforce its commitment to open cloud services that can be consumed through its Bluemix and SoftLayer offerings. The new services, now in beta, deliver a number of capabilities, including the following:

Expanded access to public cloud. By extending its OpenStack services to the public cloud, IBM says it will provide a complete portfolio of hybrid OpenStack services that span public, dedicated and local clouds, allowing companies to deploy and integrate application environments in minutes.

Speed and security. IBM says the new IBM Cloud OpenStack Services will enable clients to deploy an integrated and highly secure cloud, built on a foundation of security, quickly, providing organizations with a way to monitor cloud environments and the security controls they need to run workloads on trusted hardware.

A network of data centers. IBM says developers will be able to quickly set up and scale applications and deliver them to any OpenStack-powered platform, while IBM manages the OpenStack environment and the infrastructure, hosted in IBM's global cloud data centers. In this way, IBM says developers and clients will be able to better manage workloads, including hosted enterprise applications, analytics and web and mobile applications.

"As a top contributor to OpenStack, IBM firmly believes that an open cloud architecture translates into significant cost savings for our clients and will rapidly expand the cloud marketplace," Angel Diaz, vice president of Cloud Architecture and Technology at IBM, said in a press statement. "By delivering a complete portfolio of OpenStack services to the market, we are enabling our clients with what they need to move applications and data across multiple cloud environments without fear of getting locked into a single cloud environment."